Purpose Statement
-Examine current education issues
-Stay informed about legislation regarding those issues
-Determine ramifications of legislation and the effects on students
-Provide accurate information regarding candidates and issues to district voters
-Establish relationships with our legislators
-Mobilize parents and community members to advocate for positive change in education policies and laws

Monday, May 13, 2013

Why will funding roads take money from schools

A brief summary by Steve Norton, Michigan Parents for Schools

Why will funding roads take money from schools?

So, what's up with roads and schools?

Dear Friends,

First off, let me thank the hundreds of you who have already contacted your State
Representatives about road funding and the threat to our schools. Your message is important and is getting through.

Many
people have asked for a bit more information about this whole deal -
and I certainly understand, because it's somewhat complicated. I'm
reprinting our earlier action alert below, but let me sketch out what is
happening on this issue:

The
Governor wants to find $1.2 billion to repair
state roads. The Legislature would like to do this for the Governor, but
a majority of legislators have signed "no new taxes" pledges to help
them get elected. Since the state doesn't have
$1.2 billion sitting around, that means finding new revenue. So, what to
do?

Our
lawmakers have been very clever - or sneaky, depending on your point of
view. Right now, there are two kinds of taxes on fuel: "specific"
taxes, like excise taxes, and the regular sales tax. The "specific"
taxes on fuel are already legally earmarked for transportation, but they
don't bring in enough money to fund the Governor's program. The regular
sales tax on gasoline and diesel fuel brings in some $1 billion, but
that mostly goes to schools, with the rest going to local governments
and the state general fund.

So,
to find money for roads, lawmakers are trying to have their cake and
eat it too: they want to increase the "specific" taxes on fuel that are
legally earmarked for transportation so they generate the money the
Governor wants. Then, they want to eliminate the sales tax on fuel, so
that they can say they didn't raise taxes.

Where
does this leave schools, which stand to lose some $750 million out of
the deal (almost $500 per student)? Well, they're
"working on it." Discussions have been going on for months about how to
"replace" the revenue to schools and local government. So far, there are
only some ideas floating around and no agreement on anything. The idea
that seems to come up most often is to increase the sales tax from 6% to
7%, hopefully making up the difference to schools. Sounds good, right?

We have some real problems with this "arrangement":

Increasing the sales tax would require a vote of all the people to amend the state Constitution.
The
earliest this could take place is November, and even then, no one knows
for sure that it would pass. (We just voted down a whole passel of
proposed amendments last fall, remember?)

One
of the problems school funding has faced is that the sales tax, which
right now covers retail goods, is not keeping up with growth in the
economy even in good times. This proposal would require a huge effort to pass an amendment that would not solve this problem.

The current sales tax falls hardest on
families with limited incomes. Instead of finding a more fair way to fund our schools, this proposal would make things harder for these families.

Finally, lawmakers want to move these bills that change fuel taxes NOW, even though we would not know until November whether schools would get replacement funding!

This
is nonsense, plain and simple. This whole exercise is simply to allow
our state "leaders" to push responsibility for finding new revenue off
onto the people. If we want to invest in our roads, we need to find a
sensible way to fund that and not put our schools at risk. If we are
going to change school funding, we need to address the fact
that current funding levels simply are not adequate to deliver an
excellent education to all our children.

If you'd like to know more about these bills, you can read the non-partisan House Fiscal Agency analyses here and here. For a review of transportation funding and spending, read this for lots of
detail.